Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Lyall Watson

We are, without permission but with our tacit approval, the subjects of a giant electrical experiment. Nor is there any end in sight. The density of radio waves around us now is 100 million times the natural level reaching us from the Sun, and by 1990 it will have doubled again. When superconducting cables are introduced, the field strength around power line will be increased by another twenty times. And electric cars and vehicles moved by magnetic levitation will add entirely new sources of electropollution to the stew with which we are already assailed. Meanwhile, the first results of the experiment are starting to come in and there is, it seems, no place to hide.

Experiment | Power | Strength | Will | Wisdom |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative.

Nature | Wisdom |

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

Change | Day | Example | Nature | Time | Wisdom |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

Be what you wish others to become. Let yourself and not your words preach for you.

Words |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Did we think victory great? So it is - but now it seems to me, when it cannot be helped, that defeat is great and that death and dismay are great.

Death | Defeat | Wisdom | Think |

Xerxes I, aka Xerxes The Great NULL

Great gains are now won except by great risks.

Wisdom |

Dhyani Ywahoo

We can listen to the voice of the Earth as she shakes and sings her song expressing her tiredness. She is calling us to attention, to be alert, to recognize that now is the time to transform selfish thought and action to compassionate caretaking. Do we want a world of peace and harmony? Are we willing to make that peace within ourselves? Will we call it forth? It is your choice. Your thought and action make a difference.

Action | Attention | Choice | Earth | Harmony | Peace | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom | World | Thought |

Temple Bailey, born Irene Temple Bailey

The mother said, “This is a better day than the last, for my children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today I have given them strength... This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God... I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know that the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them.” And the children said, “You will always walk with us, Mother, even when you have gone through the gates.”

Beginning | Better | Children | Courage | Day | Fortitude | God | Journey | Mother | Strength | Will |

Ibn Ibn Al-Fāriḍ

In symbols there is a meaning that words cannot define.

Meaning | Words |

Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci

The sexual act takes on qualitative significance and value which transcends the other meanings the sexual act can have, when lovers use the act purposely to become parents. For now the two lovers express their faith in love itself, in the possibilities open to their children within the social order and in this world.

Children | Faith | Love | Order | Parents | World | Value |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Every author, indeed, who really influences the mind, who plants in it thoughts an sentiments which take root and grow, communicates his character. Error and immorality - two words for one thing, for error is the immorality of the intellect, and immorality the error of the heart - these escape from him if they are in him, and pass into the recipient mind through subtle avenues invisible to consciousness.

Character | Consciousness | Error | Heart | Mind | Wisdom | Words |

Annius NULL

I hold it to be of the highest importance for our interests that we should think rather of what we shall do than what we shall say. When we have decided upon that, it will be easy to accommodate our words to our acts.

Will | Words | Think |

Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard

In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.

Action | Diversity | Good | Inquiry | Intention | Man | Right | Truth | Wisdom |

Alice Allen, fully Alice Olive Allen Brant

Is Heaven not, after all, the Now and Here, the common things of life are all so dear.

Heaven | Life | Life |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, no birth, identity, form - no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space - ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold - the embers left from earlier fires, the sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; to frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns, with grass and flower and fruits and corn.

Appearance | Birth | Body | Force | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Object | Space | Time | Wisdom | World |

James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

Bitterness | Change | Daring | Future | Man | Surrender | Will | World | Loss | Privilege |

Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL

One should not (seek to) please others in an improper way, not be lavish of his words... To cultivate one’s person and fulfill one’s word is called good conduct. When the conduct is (thus) ordered, and the words are accordant with the (right) course, we have the substance of the rules of propriety... The course (of duty), virtue, benevolence, and righteousness cannot be fully carried out without the rules of propriety... nor can the clearing up of quarrels and discriminating in disputes be accomplished.

Benevolence | Conduct | Duty | Good | Right | Righteousness | Virtue | Virtue | Words |